NI news

On Monday, February 22nd Net Impact held its third meeting in the energy series! This meeting featured a panel of experts on energy, both from the public and private sector.

The panelist shown above farthest to the left sitting at the table is Jeff, the Director of Energy Management at Indiana University. He talked about some of the energy uses of the school, including how much energy we use and how that energy is produced. The peak load of energy used last year was 43 megawatts and over 290 million kilowatt hours were used in total over 2015. IU has mostly transitioned from coal to natural gas, which is cheaper because there are a lot of pipelines that run through Indiana, the crossroads of America, and it's more environmentally friendly than coal because it doesn't produce ash. The goal is to move towards more solar energy, but that is still a ways away as quite a bit of energy is needed to keep the university running.

Net Impact held the second part of its Energy series at this week's meeting on Monday, February 15th. The meeting began with another report from our Corporate Social Responsibility News Team. This report was concerned with different ways in which sustainability has made its way into Super Bowl commercials. The first commercial we viewed was from Colgate and addressed the problem of leaving your water running while you brush your teeth. While this advertisement had an important message to convey, it serious tone may have turned some viewers off. Another commercial we viewed was by Audi and involved the "Green Police". This advertisement had a more comedic tone and may have had a better chance to start a conversation about sustainability. However, the commercial could have been seen as making fun of those who care about the environment so it definitely was not perfect either.

Net Impact held its second official meeting of the year on Monday, February 8th. This meeting was the first of our new series in which Net Impact will spend a few weeks covering different topics in sustainability. This week: Energy!

The meeting started with Adam Reddigari giving the Corporate Social Responsibility News Team's first presentation of the year! Adam addressed a new bill in the Indiana state legislature called Indiana House Bill 1082. This bill would mandate that future environmental legislation enacted by the Indiana State Congress could be no more stringent than the federal regulations already on the books. Representative David Wolkins, one of the sponsors of the bill, argues that the Environmental Protection Agency is out of control and the state needs to do all that it can to combat it.

Net Impact held its first general meeting of the spring semester on Monday, February 1st. The purpose of this meeting was mainly to welcome new members to Net Impact and show them what we're all about. We started by going over some of the group projects that we will be doing this semester. They range from helping IU post recycle bins near classrooms during finals week to aiding IU Athletics in analyzing data to determine how much trash we diverted from the landfill last semester through the zero waste stations. Project teams are a great way to get involved with Net Impact and gain community service experience. All applications for team project membership are due this Friday at midnight so be sure to get those in if you haven't done so already!

Next Morgan Pries, Director of Internal Development and co-blogger, talked about the new attendance points system that will be implemented this semester. This points system is different from last semester so new and returning members should be aware of this. All members must earn a total of six attendance points in order to reapply for membership next semester. Additionally, at least two of these points must come from community service events, and another two must come from internal events like general meetings. These requirements also must be met in order to apply for a leadership position in the future.

Those of us on the marketing team thought it would be cool to give all our new and returning members a recap of all the fun things we did last semester. We will be doing something similar on all of our other social media platforms in the coming days as well, so look out for that! Without further ado, here are some of the highlights from fall 2015.

On Monday September 21, we had the opportunity to hear from the University Director of Sustainability, Bill Brown. Mr. Brown talked about IU’s bicentennial strategic plan and all of the wonderful effects this initiative is having on campus. To start, IU leads the Big Ten in the number of LEED-certified green buildings with 14. They hope to have 20 buildings certified by 2016, with Hodge Hall in the works. One of the major benefits of green buildings is their air quality, as they are shown to lead to over 40% fewer allergy symptoms! Another initiative of the bicentennial strategic plan is to reduce emissions on campus by 30% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050. Also, the IU energy challenge helped saved over 28.6 million gallons of water over the last two years. That is more than the rest of the Big Ten combined!

A week later, we played a green kitchen trivia game to learn fun facts about the sustainability (or lack thereof) of the making and storing of the things we eat. For example, did you know that the United States uses over 80 billion aluminum cans every year! While aluminum can be recycled over and over again, that is still way too many aluminum cans. So even though we were startled by some of the statistics, we had a ton of fun playing the green kitchen trivia game and our Director of Internal Education Adam Reddigari did a great job putting it together!

For our meeting on Monday October 5, we had the opportunity to hear from Professor Stephen Glaholt, a limnologist from the School of Public and Environmental affairs. Professor Glaholt spoke to us about how freshwater ecosystems are being harmed by businesses across the globe. he also explained the process that toxicologists go through when studying the environment and the effects of pollution and different types of pollutants. He finished up his presentation by describing how businesses can change their ways and become more environmentally responsible going forward.